GB2491832A

GB2491832A - Antenna nulling

Info

Publication number: GB2491832A
Application number: GB1109829.0A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Timothy Newton
Original assignee: Neul Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Technologies Research and Development UK Ltd
Priority date: 2011-06-13
Filing date: 2011-06-13
Publication date: 2012-12-19
Also published as: WO2012171710A1; GB201109829D0

Abstract

The present invention relates to mitigating interference in a network that uses frequency hopping. More specifically, an aspect of the invention relates to using antenna nulling for mitigating interference in such a network, and to reducing the effects of antenna nulling on desired communications within the network. A method is described for scheduling communications between a communication device and a plurality of terminals using a frequency hopping sequence, the method comprising: forming an antenna null at an interfered frequency and directing that null towards a source of interference on the interfered frequency; determining that a terminal is located within the antenna null; and scheduling communications with that terminal in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence so as to avoid the interfered frequency.

Description

I

ANTENNA NULLING

The present invention relates to mitigating interference in a network that uses frequency hopping.

More specifically, an aspect of the invention relates to using antenna nulling for mitigating interference in such a network, and to reducing the effects of antenna nulling on desired communications within the network.

A wireless network may be configured to operate without having been specifically allocated any part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such a network may be permitted to operate in so-called whitespace: a part of the spectrum that is made available for unlicensed or opportunistic access. Typically whitespace is found in the UHF TV band and spans 450MHz to 800MHz, depending on the country. A large amount of spectrum has been made available for unlicensed wireless systems in this frequency range.

A problem with operating in whitespace is that the available bandwidth is variable and cannot be guaranteed. These limitations are well-matched to the capabilities of machine-to-machine networks in which there is no human interaction. Machine-to-machine networks are typically tolerant of delays, dropped connections and high latency communications.

Any network operating in the UHF TV band has to be able to coexist with analogue and digital television broadcast transmitters. The density of the active television channels in any given location is relatively low (resulting in the availability of whitespace that can be used by unlicensed systems). The FCC has mandated that systems operating in the whitespace must reference a database that determines which channels may be used in any given location. This is intended to avoid interference with the TV transmissions and certain other incumbent systems such as wireless microphones.

For P1 receivers (including those for digital TV (DIV)), there will inevitably be adjacent channels on which a strong transmission close to the TV receiver will interfere with TV reception. For example, the TV receivers may have image frequencies and poor adjacent channel rejection (ACR) on certain frequencies due to spurs on their local oscillators and limitations in their receive filters. These frequencies are often dependent on the specific receiver implementation and so are not amenable to being avoided through the database system.

Digital TV typically uses a channel bandwidth of 6 to 8 MHz. It also uses OFDM modulation in which the overall channel bandwidth is split into a large number of narrower channels (so-called sub-carriers), each of which is individually modulated.

The system is designed so that, if a certain number of sub-carriers are subject to multipath fading, with the result that their signal-to-noise ratio is poor, the overall data can still be recovered. This is typically achieved by using interleaving and error correction codes, which mean that bit errors localised to a limited number of sub-carriers can be corrected. OFDM modulation can therefore achieve considerable robustness to multipath fading.

OFDM is only able to recover the transmitted data when the interferer is relatively narrowband compared with the bandwidth of the overall TV signal, such that a limited number of sub-carriers are affected. OFDM does not provide a similar performance benefit when the interferer occupies a relatively large proportion of the OW channel bandwidth because in this case the error control coding may be incapable of correcting the bit errors due to the higher proportion of bits that may be corrupt. If the bandwidth of the transmitted signal from the terminal can be reduced to a small fraction of the DIV channel bandwidth, there is a lower chance of the DIV receiver being unable to decode the signal correctly. Another perspective on this is that the narrowband whitespace transmitter can be located much closer to the DTV receiver before causing noticeable degradation of the decoded DIV signal. This can be of particular benefit for mobile or portable whitespace devices whose exact location and antenna orientation cannot be easily constrained.

There is a potential issue with reducing the bandwidth occupied by the whitespace device's transmitter: transmitting on a narrow bandwidth channel can make the whitespace device sensitive to poor reception due to multipath fading. This is because the entire bandwidth could be in a long-term fade (lasting multiple frames), resulting in a poor signal-to-noise ratio.

Both of these problems may be addressed using frequency hopping. Frequency hopping minimises the interference to TV reception, since no communication will be permanently causing interference to any given TV receiver. Frequency hopping also reduces the probability of the terminal being in a long-term fade. It provides a form of interleaving that enables more efficient error correction to be used.

The channels used for frequency hopping may be selected by the base station based upon information from the whitespace database on the available channels and associated power levels (which in turn are based upon the licensed spectrum use in the area). However, the whitespace database returns channels on which transmission would not cause interference to licensed users, but it does not check whether the licensed use would cause interference to possible unlicensed use. For example, a television transmitter may be intended to broadcast to only a particular coverage area, but may in fact leak into nearby areas in which the frequencies being used by that transmitter appear, at least from the whitespace database, to be available for unlicensed use. Transmissions from major TV stations can in fact be well above the thermal noise at distances of 100km from the station. Although the signal from such a transmitter may not be strong enough to be reliably received by television antennas in nearby areas, it is often strong enough to cause severe interference to a whitespace network operating in those areas. This interference may affect base stations especially, particularly if they have elevated antennas (which many have in order to increase their coverage area). On nominally free channels, reception is more likely to be dominated by distant TV broadcasts than thermal noise, especially in rural regions. If this interference is not mitigated in some manner it can render many of the whitespace channels unusable or severely compromised.

For example, in a typical location there may be 32 channels nominally available for whitespace use. However, it is likely that around 3 major TV broadcast stations will also be visible at that location (i.e. are located within approximately 100km of it).

Each station will transmit on 6 or more channels. In addition, there may be an in-fill transmitter visible broadcasting on 3 channels. This leaves only 11 usable channels.

An approach sometimes used to protect against such interference, by mitigating the impact of residual energy from distant TV broadcasts, is to configure the base station antennas to form a null in their radiation pattern at the interfered frequency. The antenna null may be steered towards the interferers to reject its signals and ideally recover the thermal noise limit. However, while effective at dealing with an interferer, the antenna null will also reject wanted signals in the same direction as the interferer.

What is needed is a method and apparatus for reducing the effects of antenna nulling on wanted terminals.

According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a communication device for communicating with a plurality of terminals according to a frequency hopping sequence, the communication device being configured to: form an antenna null at an interfered frequency and direct that null towards a source of interference on the interfered frequency; determine that a terminal is located within the antenna null; and schedule communications with that terminal in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence so as to avoid the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured to avoid the interfered frequency by assigning a communication between the communication device and the terminal to be in a time slot that is, in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence, not scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured to avoid the interfered frequency by: identifying a time period within which a communication should take place between the communication device and the masked terminals; and assigning the communication a time slot within that time period that is, in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence, not scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured to avoid the interfered frequency by: determining that the next transmission slot assigned for communication between the communication device and the terminal is, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency; and in response to that determination, not communicate with the terminal in that next assigned transmission slot.

The communication device may be configured to assign a series of time slots to communication between it and the terminal.

The communication device may be configured to avoid the interfered frequency by skipping any time slot in the assigned series that is, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured to indicate to the terminal that it should skip the time slot that is scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured not to indicate to the terminal that it should skip the time slot that is scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.

The communication device may be configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on information received from the terminal.

The communication device may be configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on one or more messages transmitted by the communication device to the terminal that the terminal has not acknowledged.

The communication device may be configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on a location associated with the terminal.

The communication device may be configured to determine that the antenna null in which the terminal is located affects only a subset of one or more of the plurality of terminals.

The communication device may be configured to continue scheduling communications with terminals not comprised in the subset to use the interfered frequency in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence.

The communication device may be configured to communicate with the plurality of terminals via a wireless network that operates in whitespace.

The communication device may be configured to communicate with the plurality of terminals via a wireless network that is configured for machine-to-machine communication.

The communication device may comprise an antenna for receiving and transmitting signals located in an elevated position.

According to a second aspect of the invention, there is provided a terminal for communicating with a communication device using a frequency hopping sequence, the terminal being configured to determine that it is located within an antenna null with respect to an interfered frequency in the frequency hopping sequence and to, in response to that determination, schedule communications with the communication device to avoid that interfered frequency.

The terminal may be configured to determine that it is located within the antenna null in dependence on information received from the communication device.

The terminal may be configured to determine that it is located within the antenna null in dependence on a communication from the communication device that it did not receive successfully.

The terminal may be configured to communicate with the communication device in a series of time slots assigned by the communication device, the terminal being configured to avoid the interfered frequency by skipping any time slots in the assigned series that are, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on that frequency.

The terminal may be configured to skip the assigned time slot responsive to instructions from the communication device.

The terminal may be configured to skip the assigned time slot independently of any instructions from the communication device.

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a method for scheduling communications between a communication device and a plurality of terminals using a frequency hopping sequence, the method comprising: forming an antenna null at an interfered frequency and directing that null towards a source of interference on the interfered frequency; determining that a terminal is located within the antenna null; and scheduling communications with that terminal in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence so as to avoid the interfered frequency.

Aspects of the present invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings: Figure 1 shows an example of a machine-to-machine network; Figure 2 shows an example of a frequency hopping sequence being determined; Figure 3 shows an example of a frame structure; Figure 4 shows an example of a slot allocation mechanism; Figure 5 shows an example of a slot skipping mechanism; Figure 6 shows an example of the functional blocks comprised in a communication device; Figure 7 shows an example of the functional blocks comprised in a communication terminal; and Figure 8 shows a base station implementing antenna nulling.

The following description is presented to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the system, and is provided in the context of a particular application. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

The general principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.

Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and features disclosed herein.

One or more embodiments of the invention relate to a communication device and method for scheduling communications between a communication device and a plurality of terminals using a frequency hopping sequence. The communication device and the terminal may be arranged to preferentially communicate on particular frequencies, in order to avoid frequencies with respect to which the terminal is located in an antenna null of the communication device. This may involve determining that one or more of the plurality of terminals is located within one or more nulls with respect to one or more frequencies in the frequency hopping sequence (these terminals may be referred to as "masked" terminals). If it is determined that the terminal is located in a null with respect to one or more frequencies in the hopping sequence, future communications between the communication device and the terminal may be scheduled to avoid those frequencies.

One or more embodiments of the invention will now be described with specific reference to a wireless network in which the communication device is a base station.

Other embodiments will be described with specific reference to a wireless network in which the communication device is a terminal. This is for the purposes of example only and it should be understood that the mechanisms for communicating over a communication channel described herein may be implemented in any suitable communication device, irrespective of what particular role that device plays within the network.

An example of a wireless network is shown in Figure 1. The network, shown generally at 104, comprises one or more base stations 105 that are each capable of communicating wirelessly with a number of terminals 106. Each base station may be arranged to communicate with terminals that are located within a particular geographical area or cell. The base stations transmit to and receive radio signals from the terminals. The terminals are suitably entities embedded in machines or similar that communicate with the base stations. Suitably the wireless network is arranged to operate in a master-slave mode where the base station is the master and the terminals are the slaves.

The base station controller 107 is a device that provides a single point of communication to the base stations and then distributes the information received to other network elements as required. That is, the network is based around a many-to-one communication model. The network may be arranged to communicate with a client-facing portion 101 via the internet 102. In this way a client may provide services to the terminals via the wireless network.

Other logical network elements shown in this example are: * Core network. This routes traffic information between base stations and client networks.

* Billing system. This records utilisation levels and generates appropriate billing data.

o Authentication system. This holds terminal and base station authentication information.

* Location register. This retains the last known location of the terminals.

* Broadcast register. This retains information on group membership and can be used to store and process acknowledgements to broadcast messages.

* Operations and maintenance centre (OMC). This monitors the function of the network and raises alarms when errors are detected. It also manages frequency and code planning, load balancing and other operational aspects of the network.

* Whitespace database. This provides information on the available whitespace spectrum.

* Client information portal. This allows clients to determine data such as the status of associated terminals, levels of traffic etc. In practice, many of the logical network elements may be implemented as databases running software and can be provided on a wide range of platforms. A number of network elements may be physically located within the same platform.

A network such as that shown in Figure 1 may be used for machine-to-machine communications, i.e. communications that do not involve human interaction.

Machine-to-machine communications are well-matched to the limitations of operating in whitespace, in which the bandwidth available to the network may vary from one location to another and also from one time instant to the next. As the network does not have any specific part of the spectrum allocated to it, even unallocated parts of the spectrum may become unavailable, e.g. due to a device in the vicinity that is operating outside of the network but using the same part of the spectrum. Machines are able to tolerate the delays and breaks in communication that can result from these varying communication conditions. Services can be provided in non real-time; low latency is not important as long as data is reliably delivered.

An overview of a frequency hopping mechanism according to one embodiment of the invention is shown in Figure 2. The process commences in step 201. In step 202, the base station determines a suitable list of frequencies for use in the frequency hopping sequence. In step 203, the base station determines a sequence using those frequencies. In step 204, the base station communicates the frequency hopping sequence to the terminals in the cell. In step 205, the base station determines that one or more of the terminals is located within a null with respect to one or more frequencies in the hopping sequence. The base station allocates slots to future communications with those one or more terminals to avoid the nulled frequencies (step 206). The process terminates in step 207. The individual steps of the process illustrated in Figure 2 are described in more detail below.

The frequency hopping sequence may be determined by the base station and then communicated by the base station to the terminals so that the terminals know in advance which frequency they should listen to and/or transmit on. The base station may select the frequencies to be used for frequency hopping based upon information from the whitespace database on the available channels and associated power levels. The base station may also reject channels found to suffer poor propagation or throughput. Finally, the base station may reject any channels on which the presence of another user, operating outside of the wireless network, has been detected. The base station may use this combination of considerations to produce a final list of frequencies available to it for frequency hopping.

Having generated a list of frequencies that are suitable for being used in the cell, the base station may be arranged to next determine in what order those frequencies should be used by the hopping sequence. The hopping sequence may be determined with reference to the sequences being used by neighbouring celis, in order to minimise interference suffered by terminals located in the boundary regions between cells. Neighbouring base stations are likely to have similar whitespace channel assignments. (As the distance between base stations increases, the assignments tend to change as the base stations are located in different TV service areas.) The hopping sequences and start points may be uncoordinated, so that all base stations randomly select hopping patterns and accept that there will be occasions where interference occurs between base stations. They may be self-coordinated, so that base stations listen to the hopping sequences of nearby base stations and select patterns that will minimise interference. Another option is for central coordination, so that central planning is used to assign hopping sequences that will minimise interference. Any of these options might be adopted, with the option of base stations and/or the network as a whole changing between them according to what is optimal at any particular point in time.

A preferred option for neighbouring base stations that use the same (or substantially the same) frequencies, is for those frequencies simply to be used in ascending or descending order. The offset that each base station applies to its own ascending or descending sequence (so that neighbouring base stations start their ascending or descending sequences at different frequencies to avoid direct clashes as far as possible) may be determined centrally. Where there is a direct clash, some messages may be lost.

Preferably the frequency hopping sequence is communicated to each terminal in the cell once it has been determined. The base station could inform terminals of the channels and hopping sequence to be used, and any changes, in a number of ways.

The base station suitably includes information defining the sequence in each frame it transmits, so that a terminal can obtain the frequency hopping sequence by listening to only one frame. The information could form part of a broadcast control channel frame transmitted by the base station to all terminals in the cell at regular intervals.

This frame could inform terminals of a forthcoming change to the channel assignment/hopping sequence in the cell, and page terminals if they are required to respond outside of their normal allocated slot. It could include, for example, a 48-bit channel map (with a bit being set if that channel is in use in the base station). A seed could also be included with each frame. In order to generate the sequence, both the base station and the terminals might send the n-bit channel map and a log2(n)-bit seed to a pseudo random noise generator. The chosen channel would then be the (MacFrame)'th value in the PRN sequence, modulo the number of bits set in the channel map. This approach results in a relatively small amount of data being needed to characterise the hopping sequence allowing it to be transmitted in each frame and hence ensuring devices can determine the future frequency usage from monitoring a single frame. Another option is for the base station to transmit the actual list of channels in the order in which hopping will occur. This could be done in each frame; however the resource requirement is high if there are a large number of channels. An alternative is to only transmit the full hopping sequence in the broadcast control channel frame and in every other frame to transmit the periodicity of the hopping sequence, the frequency of the next frame and optionally the frequency that the next broadcast control channel frame will be on. This approach allows for greater flexibility in the hopping sequences that can be adopted, but does mean that the terminals cannot gain complete knowledge of the hopping sequence from simply listening to one frame.

In one embodiment, the network may use medium access control (MAC) to share the same radio resource between multiple terminals. An example of a suitable frame structure is shown in Figure 3. The frame (shown generally at 301) comprises time to ramp-up to full output power 302 (1_IFS), a synchronisation burst 303 (DL SYNC), an information field providing the subsequent channel structure 304 (DLJCH), a map of which information is intended for which terminal 305 (DL._MAP), a field to allow acknowledgement of previous uplink transmissions 306 (DL_ACK) and then the actual information to be sent to terminals 307 (DL_ALLOC). There is then a guard period for ramp-down of the downlink and ramp-up on the uplink 308 (T_SW), followed by the allocated uplink data transmissions 310 (UL_ALLOC) in parallel with channels set aside for uplink contended access 309 (UL_CA).

A suitable hopping rate for the downlink channels may be the frame rate, so that each frame is transmitted (on the downlink) on a different frequency from the preceding frame. The frames for a network designed to operate in whitespace for machine-to-machine communication may be particularly long. In one example the frames may each be 2 seconds long, giving a frequency hop on the downlink every 2 seconds (which is 30 hops per minute).

The DL_FCH may include information to enable the terminals to determine the hopping sequence. The DL_FCH may include a list of the frequencies that are included in the sequence. If the frequency hopping sequence is just an ascending/descending sequence, one efficient way of communicating it is by means of a channel map, with a bit being set if the channel is in use in the base station. The DL_FCH may also include a MAC Frame count (16-bit) enabling terminals to determine where the base station is in its hopping pattern.

The DL_MAP informs terminals as to whether there is any information for them in the frame and whether they have an uplink slot reserved for them to transmit information.

It comprises a table of terminal identities, the number of slots that their information is spread over and the transmission mode and spreading factors used. All terminals monitoring the frame decode this field to determine whether they need to decode subsequent information. The length of the DL_MAP may be included as part of the DL_FCH. A terminal can determine the position of its assigned slots from the DL_MAF by adding up the number of slots allocated in prior rows in the table.

On the uplink the slots may be numbered from 0 to n on the first FDMA channel, then on the subsequent FDMA channel and so on. The terminal can determine how many slots there are each channel from the length of the frame available for the uplink (that remaining after completion of the downlink) divided by the length of each slot. If a terminal has data requiring multiple slots it would normally be ghien these consecutively on the same carrier as this both simplifies the terminal transmission and minimises the control information required to describe the slot location. However, it is possible to give the terminal multiple allocations on different carriers (so long as they are not simultaneous) to achieve frequency hopping on the uplink.

The whitespace database may indicate that an unlicensed user is permitted to use certain channels, e.g. channels that have not been allocated to a licensed user such as a DTV transmission. The available channels may vary in dependence on both location and time. Despite being marked as available, communications on those channels can still be subject to interference from other users and may cause interference to other users. For example, an "available" channel may be subject to emissions from licensed users, like signals from far-distant TV transmitters or spurious emissions from nearby TV transmitters. Other sources of potential interference may include devices operating in other wireless networks, such as Wi-Fi devices, wireless microphones, and other unlicensed users operating in whitespace.

Interference may also be caused by the unintended emissions of devices that are not part of a wireless network, e.g. spurious emissions from faulty electric drills.

Preferably the base station is configured to determine the direction from which an interfering signal originates and to form a null in its antenna radiation pattern in that direction. An example is illustrated in Figure 8, which shows a base station having 12 available channels. Channels I to 4 (C 1-4) suffer interference from TV transmitter TA, channels 5 to 8 (CS-B) from transmitter TB and channels 9 to 12 (C9-12) from transmitter T0. BS is a whitespace network base station and all circles marked with lowercase is are whitespace network terminals. The shaded areas represent nulls with respect to the groups of frequencies marked. While effective at combating interference, the nulls will also reject signals at their respective frequencies from wanted devices in the same direction. Therefore, in the cell shown in Figure 8, tA cannot communicate effectively with the base station over C1-4, tBl and tB2 cannot communicate effectively with the base station over C5-8 and tc cannot communicate effectively with the base station over C9-12. tA, tBl, tB2 and tc are all partially or wholly masked by the antenna nulls.

The base station may determine that one or more terminals are suffering from masking by antenna nulls in dependence on information received from those terminals, in dependence on its own observations, or in dependence on a combination of these factors. The base station may independently deduce that a terminal is suffering from antenna null masking if it does not receive an acknowledgement for a message sent to it on a particular frequency in the hopping sequence. The base station may also deduce that a terminal is suffering from antenna null masking on one or more frequencies in dependence on information that is sent to it by the terminal. The terminal may send a message to the base station especially to inform it of a failure to receive one or more messages from the base station. The terminal might include the failure information as part of a control message. The control message may be a message in which the terminal informs the base station of the quality of the downlink (comprising, for example, the signal strength and/or bit error rate observed on a particular frequency on the downlink).

The terminal may be configured to regularly monitor the quality of the downlink and send the control message on a regular, periodic basis. Alternatively, the terminal may be configured to send the control message on being instructed to do so by the base station. The base station may determine that the terminal is subject to antenna null masking on a particular frequency in dependence on the quality of the downlink.

The base station may determine that one or more terminals is being masked by an antenna null on the uplink if it fails to receive one or more messages from that terminal in a time slot that had been allocated to it.

The base station may also be configured to determine that a terminal is suffering from antenna null masking by determining a bearing or direction associated with the interferer (and hence the null) and working out which terminals are located in the same direction. For example, the base station may determine that any terminal having a bearing from the base station that is within a certain range of the bearing of the interferer will be located in the null formed to block that interferer. The location of the terminal may be determined based on information received from the terminal and/or other base stations in the network (such as time-of-flight information).

If the base station determines that a number of terminals greater than a predetermined number are suffering from antenna null masking on a particular frequency, the base station may be configured to remove the nulled frequency from the frequency hopping sequence for a time, since the masking is affecting a significant number of terminals in the cell, If, however, the masking is determined to relate to a relatively small number of terminals (lower than the predetermined number), the base station may be configured to determine that there is no need to remove the masked frequency from the hopping sequence for the cell as a whole.

If the base station determines that a terminal is subject to antenna null masking on a particular frequency or frequencies, it may schedule future communications with that terminal to avoid the problematic frequency or frequencies. If those future communications have yet to be scheduled, the base station can simply allocate future communications with the terminal to time slots within the frequency hopping sequence that are on frequencies other than the masked frequencies. The base station may be restrained by a time period within which a communication needs to be scheduled with a particular terminal. For example, in Figure 4 a communication with a particular terminal should occur between t1 and t2. The base station has two frequencies available to it during this time period: frequency I and frequency 3. So if, for example, the terminal is subject to antenna null masking on frequency 3, the base station may select the time slot on frequency I for communicating with the terminal. If there are no time slots within the predetermined time period that will occur on a non-masked frequency, the base station may be configured to not allocate a time slot for communication with the terminal in that time period. Instead, for example, the base station may schedule a time slot outside the predetermined time period, or may wait to schedule a time slot until the next predetermined time period within which it should communicate with that terminal.

If a future communication with the terminal has already been scheduled for a time slot on the masked frequency, the base station may reschedule the communication to a time slot that is not on the masked frequency. The base station preferably communicates any such reallocation to the terminal.

The base station may be configured to communicate with one or more terminals in the cell at regular, predetermined intervals. Scheduling communications in this way may be advantageous in machine-to-machine networks, in which the terminals are often devices having small batteries. By scheduling communications at regular, predetermined intervals, terminals can enter a sleep mode between communications and only wake-up when a communication is expected. If one of these regular communications is scheduled to occur on the masked frequency, the scheduled communication may be skipped. This is illustrated in Figure 5, in which a communication between the terminal and the base station is scheduled to occur at time t1 in slot 501. However, the terminal is subject to interference on frequency 2, which this time slot is scheduled to use. Therefore, time slot 501 may be skipped with the communication occurring on the next scheduled slot (time slot 502) instead.

If a scheduled communication is to be skipped, the base station may indicate this to the terminal in advance.

Alternatively, the base station and the terminal may independently determine that the next scheduled slot should be skipped without exchanging messages to confirm this.

Such independent determinations may be made, on the terminal's side, by it not having successfully received a message from the base station on a particular frequency and, on the base station's side, by it not having received an acknowledgement for the message transmitted on that frequency. The terminal and base station may be configured only to make such an independent determination of there being antenna null masking after more than one message on a particular frequency has failed.

A drawback with having the terminal and base station independently determine to skip a scheduled communication is that the terminal and the base station might guess' differently as to whether or not a scheduled communication should be skipped. However, in a machine-to-machine network this is not necessarily problematic. Any missed data can simply be resent by the base station and machines are generally tolerant of delays.

The base station may be configured to preferentially schedule communications to avoid the masked frequency for a predetermined length of time before reinstating that frequency in communications with the terminal. The base station may be arranged to indicate this predetermined length of time to the terminal. If the base station and the terminal are configured to independently determine whether or not to skip a communication, both the base station and the terminal may be configured to skip communications scheduled to occur on the masked frequency for the predetermined length of time.

The allocation methods described above may be advantageously applied to either uplink or downlink communications between the base station and the terminal. The base station may schedule its transmissions to a terminal and/or that terminal's transmissions to it to avoid frequencies on which the terminal is subject to an antenna null.

An example of the functional blocks that may be comprised in a communication device according to one embodiment of the invention are shown in Figure 6. The communication device, shown generally at 601, comprises a communication unit 603 connected to an antenna 602 for transmitting and receiving messages. The communication device further comprises a monitoring unit 605 for determining when a terminal may be subject to antenna null masking and a scheduling unit 604 for scheduling communications between the base station and the terminal. The communication unit may effectively act as a central controller for the scheduling process and may pass information between the other functional blocks.

Examples of the functional blocks that may be comprised in a terminal according to one embodiment of the invention are shown in Figure 7. The terminal, shown generally at 701, comprises a communication unit 703 connected to an antenna 702 for transmitting and receiving messages. The terminal further comprises a monitoring unit 704 for analysing whether it is subject to antenna null masking on one or more frequencies and a skip' unit 705 for determining when a scheduled communication should be skipped as it occurs on an interfered frequency. The communication unit may effectively act as a central controller and may pass information between the other functional blocks.

The apparatus shown in Figures 6 and 7 are shown illustratively as comprising a number of interconnected functional blocks. This is for illustrative purposes and is not intended to define a strict division between different parts of hardware on a chip. In practice, the communication device preferably uses a microprocessor acting under software control for implementing the methods described herein. In some embodiments, the algorithms may be performed wholly or partly in hardware.

The applicant hereby discloses in isolation each individual feature described herein and any combination of two or more such features, to the extent that such features or combinations are capable of being carried out based on the present specification as a whole in the light of the common general knowledge of a person skilled in the art, irrespective of whether such features or combinations of features solve any problems disclosed herein, and without limitation to the scope of the claims. The applicant indicates that aspects of the present invention may consist of any such individual feature or combination of features. In view of the foregoing description it will be evident to a person skilled in the art that various modifications may be made within the scope of the invention.

Claims

CLAIMS1. A communication device for communicating with a plurality of terminals according to a frequency hopping sequence, the communication device being configured to: form an antenna null at an interfered frequency and direct that null towards a source of interference on the interfered frequency; determine that a terminal is located within the antenna null; and schedule communications with that terminal in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence so as to avoid the interfered frequency.
2. A communication device as claimed in claim 1, configured to avoid the interfered frequency by assigning a communication between the communication device and the terminal to be in a time slot that is, in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence, not scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.
3. A communication device as claimed in claim I or 2, configured to avoid the interfered frequency by: identifying a time period within which a communication should take place between the communication device and the masked terminals; and assigning the communication a time slot within that time period that is, in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence, not scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.
4. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to avoid the interfered frequency by: determining that the next transmission slot assigned for communication between the communication device and the terminal is, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency; and in response to that determination, not communicate with the terminal in that next assigned transmission slot.
5. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to assign a series of time slots to communication between it and the terminal.
6. A communication device as claimed in claim 5, configured to avoid the interfered frequency by skipping any time slot in the assigned series that is, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.
7. A communication device as claimed in claim 6, configured to indicate to the terminal that it should skip the time slot that is scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.
8. A communication device as claimed in claim 5, configured not to indicate to the terminal that it should skip the time slot that is scheduled to take place on the interfered frequency.
9. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on information received from the terminal.
10. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on one or more messages transmitted by the communication device to the terminal that the terminal has not acknowledged.
11. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to determine that the terminal is located within the antenna null in dependence on a location associated with the terminal.
12. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to determine that the antenna null in which the terminal is located affects only a subset of one or more of the plurality of terminals.
13. A communication device as claimed in claim 12, configured to continue scheduling communications with terminals not comprised in the subset to use the interfered frequency in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence.
14. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to communicate with the plurality of terminals via a wireless network that operates in whitespace.
15. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, configured to communicate with the plurality of terminals via a wireless network that is configured for machine-to-machine communication.
16. A communication device as claimed in any preceding claim, comprising an antenna for receiving and transmitting signals located in an elevated position.
17. A terminal for communicating with a communication device using a frequency hopping sequence, the terminal being configured to determine that it is located within an antenna null with respect to an interfered frequency in the frequency hopping sequence and to, in response to that determination, schedule communications with the communication device to avoid that interfered frequency.
18. A terminal as claimed in claim 17, configured to determine that it is located within the antenna null in dependence on information received from the communication device.
19. A terminal as claimed in claim 17 or 18, configured to determine that it is located within the antenna null in dependence on a communication from the communication device that it did not receive successfully.
20. A terminal as claimed in any of claims 17 to 19, configured to communicate with the communication device in a series of time slots assigned by the communication device, the terminal being configured to avoid the interfered frequency by skipping any time slots in the assigned series that are, according to the frequency hopping sequence, scheduled to take place on that frequency.
21. A terminal as claimed in claim 20, configured to skip the assigned time slot responsive to instructions from the communication device.
22. A terminal as claimed in claim 20, configured to skip the assigned time slot independently of any instructions from the communication device.
23. A method for scheduling communications between a communication device and a plurality of terminals using a frequency hopping sequence, the method comprising: forming an antenna null at an interfered frequency and directing that null towards a source of interference on the interfered frequency; determining that a terminal is located within the antenna null; and scheduling communications with that terminal in accordance with the frequency hopping sequence so as to avoid the interfered frequency.
24. A communication device substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawings.
25. A terminal substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawings.
26. A method substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying drawings.